Gary Sinise has talked about the terrible death of his son, who passed away last year at the age of 33 from a rare kind of cancer.
Following the cancer diagnoses of his son Mac and wife Moira in the same year, the Hollywood legend put his acting career on hold.
According to sources, two months after his mother’s stage-three breast cancer diagnosis in 2019, Mac was informed that he had a rare type of bone cancer. While Mac tragically lost his battle in January 2024, Moira survived and was later deemed cancer-free.
In the wake of his son’s passing, Sinise said via a statement on the Gary Sinise Foundation website, “He died on January 5, 2024 at 3:25pm, and was laid to rest on January 23rd.”
“Like any family experiencing such a loss, we are heartbroken and have been managing as best we can… I am so blessed, fortunate, and proud to be his dad.”
In a recent interview with People Magazine, Sinise disclosed that his son has chordoma, a form of bone cancer. According to reports, it hardly affects 300 persons in the US annually.
“It looked like a monster grabbing my son’s spine,” Sinise said of Mac’s MRI scan.
The 33-year-old’s tumour was removed by doctors, but sadly, he was one of the rare chordoma patients whose cancer returned.
Forrest Gump star Sinise decided to put his career on hold and leave the spotlight in order to try to help his son live after he spent six of the first eight months of 2020 in the hospital.
“That’s when I stopped acting,” Sinise told People. “I started putting everything I had into trying to find a miracle for Mac.”
He added, “I didn’t want Mac to be thinking of the next treatment or to worry. So I thought about cancer all the time. You’re trying to take the pain away. A few times I felt like I couldn’t do enough, or I didn’t know what to do. Then you say a little prayer, get back up and go back into the fight.”
As time passed, Mac’s condition deteriorated. “Hope keeps you in the fight,” Sinise said. “You could see tumors on his body. You knew the drugs weren’t working. But I wasn’t thinking we were going to lose him.”
Surrounded by family, Mac tragically lost his fight with illness on January 5, 2024.
“He kept wanting to stay,” Sinise said. “He didn’t want to go. But I know Mac was at peace at the end. He dealt with it with grace and courage.”
Regarding a potential comeback to the entertainment industry, Sinise is happy to take his time and put his family’s needs first.
He explained, “Something may come along and it’ll be right, but it’s harder to leave home now. I just want to be around family. Since losing Mac, I hold my daughters a lot tighter. You think about the things that are really important.”
